Shades of Dawn
by misscam
Summary: Gil Grissom nearly died on a Tuesday morning, three years after his life had walked away from him, and it was a start. [GSR] WIP.
1. Prologue

Shades of Dawn  
by Camilla Sandman

Disclaimer: Not mine. CSI is CBS's and this is merely written for fun and no profit.

Author's Note: This is set sometime in a not-too-far-off, undetermined future. Some references to at least the first five seasons will occur.

Prologue

II

Gil Grissom nearly died on a Tuesday morning.

It had been a long Monday night, just as it had been a long Sunday night and a long Friday before that. He was getting used to the long nights, perhaps too used to them. Perhaps too used to the bubble that was his life and the dangers within to consider the dangers outside.

He never even saw the car. He remembered only vaguely the heat of his own blood against his skin before falling to the earth almost as rain. Strange that it should be so warm and he should feel so cold, even with the first rays of the sun sliding across his eyelids and into his eyes. It also strangely occurred to him that he never even saw the shades of dawn any more, not sleeping through it, but working through it.

Then there was darkness and stillness and forgetting. Sometimes, he was vaguely aware of voices just at the edge of consciousness, sometimes speaking his name. Anchors beckoning him to shore, but he felt comfortable adrift in the sea of blankness. Quiet there, as the silence he sometimes even envied his mother for. The world roared and noise was pain.

Pain.

"Don't you dare leave me like this, you bastard," pain said, pain in Catherine's voice.

He stayed a while then, even opening his eyes to her, wishing her hair was another colour and her voice of another tilt. What had her name been again? She had been...

Blankness and then her name. Sara. She had been Sara. He remembered the name and the feeling that went with it, but her face felt lost in the roar that had claimed most of his mind and he drifted away from. Not quite himself, but the awareness of self awaiting behind the wall pain had erected. He would have to suffer to be Grissom again and for now, he wanted to be painless.

Time drifted too and the skin against his darkened, becoming Warrick's. Warrick, and Catherine asleep in a corner, lines of fear on her face even in the grip of dreams.

"You're going to live," Warrick promised, ordered, demanded. Grissom found himself nodding, even as he felt a desire to let go and be stillness where no pain could ever touch. Desires could be overcome. Somewhere within himself, he knew he was very good at that.

"Yes."

The voice didn't sound like his, but it had to be, for it wasn't Warrick's. And it did hold all the pain he felt crawling up and into him, like ants coming to their lair. The blankness invited, but he resisted it, feeling a desire to see one particular image before it was all dark again and the sense of self didn't matter.

"Want... to see... Sara."

"What?"

"Sara," he insisted, feeling the pain pulsate in his body with his heart beat, pumping more and more anxiety into him. "Need to…"

"Grissom…" Warrick sounded slightly perturbed. "Sara left three years ago."

Memories then. Sara's hand, never quite firm in his grasp, sliding loose. Her back as she had walked, and all the words he could never say battering against it. And ever since, always working long nights. Always, until now.

She had been Sara.

Gil Grissom nearly died on a Tuesday morning, three years after his life had walked away from him, and it was a start.


	2. Chapter One

Chapter One

Another dawn and Sara Sidle was already awake, as she always was. She wasn't sure just when she had started taking a daily run just as the sun would rise and claim the horizon for fire, for now it felt as if it had always been so. Or perhaps she willed it to have always been so, creating an abyss between what was and what had been. She hadn't forgotten. She merely chose not to remember.

Another dawn, and it was getting colder. Autumn was in the air and in the sea, growing restless by the turn of seasons. She watched it it battering against the shores, a caress of water that was never quite gentle, sometimes even violent in its passion. Wave after wave after wave, carving their slow mark into rock and sand and land. Sometimes, she wondered if the sea would claim all, take and take until there was nothing left. But then, the sea also gave - rain to bring life, currents taking warmth where cold would otherwise reign and sometimes even land back.

No life without the sea, then, for all it might also hurt.

The sun was a faint heat in her back as she returned to her home, the last hill up always leaving her breathless and awake. Lights were starting to come on among her neighbours, awakening to another day in greater Boston. Not for the first time, she wondered

For a moment, she paused at her doorstep, watching the sun glimmer off a distant skyscraper, breaking the light and showing all the colours the sun hid within. Perhaps this was going to be a beautiful late-summer day.

Perhaps. She had long ago learned that the little hopes were much easier to bear when they came to nothing, and possible to live on when they did not.

Perhaps it was going to be a beautiful day and no one would get murdered and there would be no blood for her to feel.

The kitchen was dark as she had left it, the fridge humming its lonely tune and one red light blinking insistently on her answering machine. Work only called on her cell, and she found herself expecting James's voice as she pressed play.

"Sara, it's Warrick. Please call me. Something's come up."

She stood utterly still for a moment, hand still on the lightswitch. Warrick. Warrick, who she had not spoken with since calling to half-heartedly congratulate him on his marriage to Catherine - was it a year ago already? A year and a half? She chose not to remember. Easier not to. Easier to make the cut clean and clear, not remembering...

_For a breathless moment, his fingers across her cheek, his gaze embracing her. For a moment of hope, his lips against her skin and no wall between them. For a moment, Grissom and Sara and nothing else.  
_

_"This is a start," he whispered, voice filling her. "This is a start for us."  
_

_For a moment, she believed him._

She shook the memory away, picking up the phone without hesitation. Warrick could be calling about a million things. Greg might have been promoted. Nick could finally have married. Ecklie could finally have decided to run for President. A million reasons.

He answered on the third ring, voice tired and so familiar she could almost feel the Las Vegas sun, as if she was there with him. "Brown."

"Sidle."

"Sara! I wasn't sure you still had the same number."

"I'm still in Boston. Still in Vegas?"

"Of course. You know me. Listen..." He hesitated, and already she could feel chill creep up her spine. He wouldn't hesitate if it wasn't about Grissom. "There was an accident. Grissom got hit by a car. He's going to live, but it was a close call."

"That's good," she muttered, her hands like claws as she clutched the phone. He couldn't die. He could never die, even if she didn't want to be reminded of his life. He couldn't.

"He've been asking for you."

Breath.

"Sara?"

"It's been three years since..."

"I know. I know you don't owe him anything. I know," Warrick repeated, sounding apologetic. "I just thought you should know anyway."

"Yeah. Thanks. I have to get to work. I'll... I'll call you later, okay?"

"Sure."

And with a click, the past was gone again and she stood in her dark kitchen, the sunlight only starting to crawl in and across the floor. She stared at it, trying not to think, not to feel, just be still. There were memories everywhere, as if the abyss had been bridged and they had found their way across. She had never forgotten. And she had tried so very, very hard to never forgive.

"Shit," she whispered and leaned her head against the counter, feeling the cool of it against her forehead. So tempting even now to forgive it all and rush to his side and only because he had spoken her name. But no one had ever said her name quite like him, even the memory of it alluring. Still she had walked away. She had. She should call Warrick back and tell him never to call about Grissom again, that Grissom could go to hell as far as she was concerned, but that would be a lie.

She lifted her head, walked out of the kitchen, showered and was out of the house in ten minutes, her body so used to the morning's routine she didn't really need to think about what to do.

It would have been easier if there hadn't truly been anything between them but unfulfilled pauses and longing gazes. It would have been easier if she didn't remember the feel of his beard scratching against her thigh, the feel of his palm under her fingers, the rise and fall of his chest as she rested in him. She couldn't forget what had been burned into memory.

The air was warmer as she stepped out again, the sun having begun its work of the day. The car gleamed brightly in the light, still looking almost like new from the wax James had given it. It was a good life she had started here. A good job, a good home, even good friends. Or perhaps comfortable was a better word. A comfortable life.

And now...

_The car door was hot against her back, warmed by sun and summer. In contrast, his body was cooler, almost shade as she leaned against him.  
_

_"What are we doing here?" she asked, his breath warm on her neck. She could almost smell Lake Mead stretch out behind them, the waves of light breaking against it.  
_

_"We're watching you in sunlight."  
_

_"Grissom..."  
_

_He kissed her, the taste of her still on his lips from the last kiss, reminding her that to him, she was ever beautiful, in sunlight and darkness and all the shades of dawn.  
_

_"I am," he whispered and she believed him._

Another day, and Sara wasn't even sure she had been living the past three years.


	3. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

In the whiteness of his hospital room, he watched the sun claw its way across the floor, ever towards him and he wondered what would come when the sun did.

Sunlight was only sunlight, the scientist in Grissom knew, lecturing him about wavelengths and spectrum and the processes of the sun. And yet dawn seemed to him a strange bringer of hope in its slow reveal of starlight, still warm after its passage through the cold space. Perhaps it was the sense of ever beginning to it, that whatever sunset and night ended, the morning could bring anew.

He was waiting for Sara.

It was foolish, stupid, against all reason, and yet he did. Her words had been the end, but dawn still beckoned its hope. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe the words could come undone in time and she would stand there, looking at him with that look he'd come to understand was only meant for him.

Instead, it was Warrick, Catherine and Greg that had come, each speaking bright words about how he would improve and live and how the lab needed him before leaving again.

He began to understand very well why Sara had resented those words. They seemed to define him by what he did, not who he was. The scientist didn't much care, but the scientist saw death as a fact and not up close and personal as a metal monster of a car, breaking bones and tearing flesh as it went. Death was a fact, but suddenly, it had also become something almost like fear.

He hadn't wanted to die. He didn't want to die. But he wasn't sure what life was any more, what life had been. Merely time passed, or something more?

Time passed was simple to find, ever preserved in his memories. Childhood, teenage years, education, adulthood, work, work, and then, a faint smile and dark hair in the wind and a fateful desire spoken...

_"I want to kiss you." _

Her eyes darkened and she paused, the wind whipping her hair into her face and shielding her eyes from him. "Why now?"

_"I've been waiting." _

"For what?"

"For you to be whole. For me to be whole."

"There is no whole, Grissom. There's just the pieces you do your best to fit together every morning you wake." She shook her head slightly, as if the thought was painful. "Close your eyes."

"Sara…"

"Close your eyes."

The darkness was not complete, a hint of light creeping past his lashes as he obeyed and waited. He could feel her move and see the dark blue of her shirt as she came in front of him.

"Now kiss me," she said and he could feel her lips tantalizing close, her breath kissing his.

"Why with my eyes closed?"

"Then it'll just me and you, not Sara and Grissom and long years of back and forth. The first kiss should be a start."

"No," he said, opening his eyes to her gaze. "I could close my eyes forever and it would always still be you I'd see. We'll make the start with eyes wide open."

Eyes never leaving her, he dared a caress, feeling the skin of her cheek under his fingers and then under his lips. Soft and weathered and with lines life had chiselled into her, beautiful because it was hers.

_"This is a start," he whispered, willing it to be a promise, willing it to be a prophecy. "This is a start for us."  
_

Life in a memory. All life was in memories, a shuffling jigsaw as the present ever made future into past. His start had become an end. And his life nearly had become death. Another change. It was almost as if he wasn't quite Grissom any more, or at least the Grissom he had thought he was. Perhaps he had died, or a part of him had.

It remained to see what had survived.

His bones ached and he closed his eyes to the pain, feeling soft hands on his forehead a moment later. Another nurse with another string of well-meaning words designed to make him improve. He was already tired of them, tired of healing, tired of lingering away from death but not quite in life yet.

"A Miss Sidle called, I told her you were resting," the voice went on, the words suddenly becoming something of sense in his mind. Sidle. Sara.

"Sara?" he muttered, trying to focus and finding the pain a wall in the way.

"Yes, Sara Sidle. She said she'd call later."

For a moment, he almost wished she hadn't. Hope strengthened would almost be impossible to kill and would live in him, as him until bones were ashes and hope returned to the dawn. Maybe she still thought of him. Maybe she could forgive him at last. Maybe he could forgive himself. Maybe he could forgive her. Maybe...

"If she calls again, I'm not resting. Even if I'm sleeping," he ordered the nurse, who merely smiled faintly, as if merely indulging another whim of a patient.

"Yes, Dr. Grissom. You should rest now."

He heard her leave a moment later, painkiller delivered to dull his senses and strengthen the wall. No pain for a while, at least not in body. Nothing to kill his memories with. Nothing to kill words already spoken.

_"No." _

"Sara..."

"No. You can't expect me to still loveyou after this. You can't."

"I don't."

No expectations. Only hope, faint and yet strong at the same time, filling him as sleep did, edging away pain and memories and awareness.

Whatever had survived, it had that.


	4. Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Much love and gratitude to Ghibli for beta duties.

II

Blood was ever blood and death still smelled the same and yet, Sara almost felt as if it all took another shade in Boston. Perhaps it was her perception that had changed or perhaps it was the air, clad in the salt of the sea - the only smell that was ever constant. The dead became ashes, houses rose and fell, car spewed their gases and rusted. The sea was ever there.

She had started to think she'd be ever there, too, as "ever" as humans could manage. And now the past yanked and allured and beckoned.

Grissom.

She stared at the phone again, debating even as she knew the choice had been made. Even if Grissom had been unavailable, she had called. She would call again. And he would be back in her life, almost like a ghost that could grow substantial if only she let him.

If she let him... If she went back, kissed him, forgot betrayal, forgot hurt, lost herself in the world of justice and puzzles and blood and _lived_, one last time...

_Silence in the night, shadows in her mind. She had to leave in the morning, had to before she'd be tempted to forgive him and lost herself in the process. But first, she wanted one last goodbye, one last memory. _

"Sara," he said in surprise as he opened the door. "I thought..."

"Hush. Tomorrow," she lied, a lie that felt almost worse than all of his, for this lie would give him hope.

He nodded, and the hope in his eyes was a dawn even in the dark of night and she almost wanted to be warm in it forever.

Almost.

Almost a daydream, but her pride rebelled. It could not be like that. It would not be like that. But she could still fantasize, could still feel just a little bit more alive for considering it. No harm in that, as long as she knew reality.

She dialled before she could overthink it, overfear it, overwant it. The nurse who answered sounded the same, or perhaps it was merely the ring of hospital in the voice. This time, Grissom was awake and she could not help but feel a moment of uncomplicated joy. She would hear his voice again.

"Sara?"

"Hey, Grissom," she replied, listening to him draw breaths. "I heard you gave everyone quite a scare."

His chuckle sounded pained. "Not as much as the car gave me."

"Yeah..."

"I'm glad you called," he hurried out, almost sounding like a rehearsed line. "I know... I mean, it's been a while."

"Yes," she agreed. "They think you're gonna be all right, Warrick said."

"In body," he replied. "I miss you, Sara."

She closed her eyes and breathed, breathed, breathed. It was easy to hold a grudge against a shadow and a memory she could manipulate. It was hard against a living, breathing entomologist she had loved, might still love.

"I... I miss all you guys," she managed, a safe truth of sorts. "Even Catherine."

"Even me."

"Yes."

The silence didn't feel wholly uncomfortable, almost like an offer of rest in running a marathon. Though perhaps the image of Grissom working out was not the best to recall at this moment.

"I'm glad you're all right," she said, trying not to remember anything at all. If she didn't remember, maybe she wouldn't want to hang up on him or blurt out something she couldn't take back later. "I should probably let you rest."

"I think I've rested myself to within an inch of boring myself mindless," he said softly. "I'm almost hoping for a gruesome murder to happen."

"With undetermined time of death and lots of creepy crawlies?"

"Bliss."

They both laughed, and for a moment it was almost like the years were drawn away, like curtains before a window, letting her see. Pain and hurt and his voice, whispering her to sleep.

"Would you visit if I asked?" he asked suddenly, shattering the glass and leaving the window open.

"No." She refused herself to think over it, refused herself to be tempted. She had left him, but he had left her first and the balance was now even. If she came just because he asked, the power would be all his and trust would not be restored. She might still love him. She wasn't sure she still trusted him.

Power and trust mattered. Her mother had taught her that.

He said nothing and the silence was alluring, desiring, hurting. It was almost as if all that was unspoken had been spoken still, but not in words.

_Forgive me_ said his silence.

_No _said hers. _But I wish I could._

"I'm sorry," he finally said, voice tired and uneven, death's echo in it still.

"Rest now," she replied. "I'll call when you feel better."

"Thank you," he said and then he was gone, leaving only the ghost in her memories. So much for not remembering. Three years on and all the walls she had erected seemed to shatter like glass.

_Grissom's breath, like a lullaby for her tired self, rocking her near sleep. Grissom's heartbeat, reverberating in his skin, in her skin, in her heart, a symbiosis of heartbeats. Grissom's hands, warm against her back, palm and lines of life against the weathered skin of hers. Grissom's eyes, a caress of gaze, anchoring her before drifting away to sleep. _

"I love you," she whispered then, and only then, daring not the words in daylight and his gaze.

Grissom's lips, curving to a faint smile, already promising tomorrow's morning kiss.

"Good."

She put down the phone and stared out the window, seeing twilight crawling in across the sea and over Boston. She had built a home here, she had been content, if not happy. And still she suddenly longed for the desert, for the bright lights of nighttime Las Vegas and the lullaby of breaths.

She hadn't forgotten. She had chosen not to remember and now she was beginning to remember just why. Blood was ever blood, but life wasn't ever life. Humans adapted to their surroundings, fitted themselves to new puzzles and adjusted to new people. Her life wasn't as it had been. The lab was another, James was not Grissom, the people she worked with were not Warrick, Greg, Nick or Catherine.

Was it enough to be content?

She wouldn't come if he asked. But maybe, just maybe, she could come unasked.


	5. Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Thanks once more to Ghibli for beta duties.

II

The past was the future, was nothing but the pieces of a puzzle ever being laid anew. There was the present and the present held Grissom and a bed and nothing to do but consider the puzzle.

The puzzle was a work of what ifs and he was carefully tracing the threads with his mind.

If he removed the piece that was the car hitting him, almost killing him, the piece that held Sara's shadow back in his life went also. If he removed the piece that was his leaving when she needed him the most, her shadow would be her and his life would have a different goal. If he removed the piece that was him asking her to come to Las Vegas, she would always have been the fantasy and he would have been safe, but always living a little less. If he removed the piece that was his father's betrayal, his whole life had to be repatterened and perhaps with no Sara at all.

Sometimes, he thought that maybe it would have been the best of all. But that was the thought of fear, of memory.

_"Never give away what you can't lose," his mother signed, her hands caressed by the setting sunlight as they sat in the garden, him with a glass of caught crickets, she with the book she had been reading to him. _

"Did you? To father?" he signed, wondering if there was a sign where there wasn't truly a word for someone you loved and hated both, wanted to never see again and to come back still, wanted to never forgive and forgive even so.

"Yes."

She smiled distantly, faintly, a smile of loss and pain and Gil Grissom felt another piece of the child in him die with the smile.

Never give away what you can't lose.

He wouldn't forget.

He hadn't forgotten, but sometimes, he wished he had. Perhaps he'd been able to give her what she wanted then, when she had needed it. Perhaps he'd been able to comfort her then instead of fleeing at her loss.

She hadn't forgiven him that. He hadn't forgiven his father. And the puzzle remained ever formed and the what-ifs were pointless.

"Grissom, what have I told you about brooding?" a bright voice sounded from the door.

"Save it for the retirement home when there's nothing else to do."

"Except ogling the younger nurses," Catherine corrected and stepped into the room. She was smiling, but he could detect a slight fatigue in her eyes nevertheless. It had probably been a long couple of days. "How do you feel?"

"Like a car ran over me," he replied dryly, but not without a small wince.

"Well, it only hit you, but close enough," she said and sat down. "Warrick's coming later. Uhm... Don't be mad at him, but I think he called Sara and..."

"I know," he interrupted. "She called."

"She what?" Catherine stared at him, obviously trying to figure out what other delusions he'd been having.

"Ask the nurse if you need evidence," he said dryly. "Sara called."

"Sara called," Catherine repeated, still sounding slightly sceptical. "And?"

He closed his eyes, feeling an overwhelming desire to give the mess to Catherine and ask her to fix it, as a mother would. "I almost asked if she could come back. She won't."

"Oh, Gil." Catherine sounded half exasperated, half sad. "She can't come on your bidding even if you wished to. If she came to you, it would give you all the cards and quite frankly, you've had them for fat oo long. She was always the one making the effort, even from the start."

"You noticed?"

"Even the dead noticed, Gil."

"Oh."

_The chill of the morgue as he entered was matched only by the warmth as he saw her curved back, staring intently at the face of death. As intently as she had stared at his lips after dinner yesterday before kissing them with a taste of onions and Sara. As intently as she had stared at him when he had knelt before her in only skin and laced his fingers in hers. _

Sara did everything with intensity and he wondered how long he could stay afloat and not drown in it.

"Should I be envious?"

She didn't look up, but he could feel the glimmer in her eyes nevertheless. "Yes. John Doe is getting all my attention today."

"What does he have that I don't?"

"A broken neck and a rather nasty head wound."

"Don't think I can match that."

"Nope."

"And when he's buried and I have brilliantly solved the murder, do I have a chance then?"

"When **I **have brilliantly solved the murder, I'll consider it."

"I'm at your mercy now?"

"Fair's fair, Doctor Grissom," she replied and for a moment, six years of waiting and rejection hung between them. "Luckily for you, I fancy your bugs."

He laughed, he couldn't help it. She finally looked up, and her eyes were a beacon as he walked towards her, feeling ridiculously happy and silly and almost young.

Maybe he could drown as long as she kept kissing life into him.

"What are you thinking of?" Catherine asked, looking at him intently.

"Age," he said truthfully, without adding the rest. He had never asked Catherine just how much she knew of what had happened between Sara and him, and he had in a sense returned the courtesy with her and Warrick. But he suspected Catherine knew enough to understand difference in age had bothered him.

"Oh, please don't start reminding us all of your age. Then I'll be reminded of mine and none of us want that."

He tried to smile, but it was more of a grimace of pain.

"You should rest. I'll come back later," she said hurriedly, getting up. "Try to restrict the brooding."

"Look after the lab," he muttered, fighting the urge to close his eyes.

"Leave it all to me, Gil," she said affectionately, patting his arm. "Leave everything to me."

"Yes," he agreed, if only because he hadn't the strength to fight her.

It occurred to him after she had left that everything could be a very, very dangerous word.


	6. Chapter Five

Chapter Five

II

Once, long ago, Catherine Willows had been slightly in love with Gil Grissom.

In love had turned to love, to a sort of marriage without honeymoon or sex and in many ways, she still thought of him as hers. Her friend, certainly, her colleague, her support, her lab husband, her known. Never her lover. Someone else had claimed that place, and she hadn't been jealous. Not for that. For other things, she had at times felt Sara an intruder. Into the lab, into the dynamics, into the relationships. Into Grissom.

She had gotten over it, or gotten used to it, and watched the play between them with bemused interest bordering on annoyance with Grissom and sympathy for Sara. She hadn't interfered, merely commented now and then, knowing that in a dance of two, a third pair of legs merely tripped things up. She had told Warrick as much.

She was beginning to regret that now.

"No, Catherine," Warrick repeated, folding his arms, the sun framing him as he leaned against the car. "Didn't you tell me once interfering in whatever was going on between them was a terrible, terrible idea?"

"They just need a chance to talk somewhere on neutral ground, somewhere neither has the upper hand," she protested and he groaned.

"Don't you think those two have said more than enough to each other? You were there when..."

"Yes, yes," she agreed hurriedly. "I remember. I could have killed him. He knew Sara's mother was a raw deal to her. He knew."

"Yeah," Warrick said quietly. "But this is _Grissom. _What he knows and what he reasons from that knowledge are two very different things. You and I have been around him for a long time, and I still can't quite puzzle him out."

She smiled. Grissom wasn't a puzzle. Grissom was light, reflecting off what was held up to him to illuminate it - the lab, the bugs, the quotes - and only truly seen when broken into the spectrum of colours by glass or water or Sara. Only then did you see what was within.

"I do know Grissom would not be happy you trying to fix his love life for him," Warrick went on. "Neither would Sara. Come on, Catherine, we have our own lives to live. We're not side-kicks in _The Grissom and Sara Tales_, fun as that gig might've been. We're not the Las Vegas dating agency. I know I'm not Cupid, and I haven't seen any wings on you."

"Warrick, how long have we been married?"

He gave her a look that showed his clear disapproval at the change of topic, but his lips curved into a faint smile as he answered. "Sixteen months, five days and some hours."

"How many fights have we had?"

"About as many as we've had reconciliations," he replied, breath hot against her skin as he leaned forward and kissed her.

She placed a finger on his lips, feeling his hands rest on her hips and lock her close. "Imagine after one of our fights, I left and you never had a chance to plead your case and beg my forgiveness."

"Oh, I would be the villain?"

"Naturally."

"Naturally? I sense another reconciliation being needed."

The sun was warm against her back when she kissed him, the morning dawning behind her. She tried to imagine knowing the dawn was just the start of another day without him, tried to imagine knowing it was her fault it would be so, tried to imagine living on still. Tried and failed as her heart seemed to fail under the imagined pain of it all.

Grissom had been an idiot. But she still loved him, in her own way, and she had nearly lost him. And he would have died alone, without the second chance of life the lab had once given her.

It didn't seem right.

"Warrick," she said softly, tilting her head up to meet his dark gaze. "He's my friend."

"I know," he said simply and she knew he did.

_She knew even before she entered what had happened, knew from his silence as she stood in the doorway, knew from the simple fact that he was her friend and she had learned to read the shades of his eyes._

"Gil?" she said quietly.

"Catherine."

The office was dark and he seemed darker as she looked at him, not only without light on him, but without light in him too. For a moment, she wondered if she was watching the emotional equivalant of a black hole; the centre collapsed and the forces in it so strong nothing could pull free, not even hope.

"Sara left, didn't she?"

"Yes."

"Can't say I blame her," she muttered and he just looked at her. "Come on, Gil. Her mother dies, you play Mr. Emotionally Unavailable just when she might need you, you go poking about her mother's case and as a result we all find out, Ecklie finds out, hell, even Hodges. How did you expect her to react? And then you manage to make it worse, impossible as that seems..."

"I know!" he cut in, lifting a hand to halt her triade, his face so still it hurt to look at. "I know, Catherine."

"I know," Warrick said again. "He's my friend too, Catherine. I still think it's a terrible idea and neither will thank you for it, but..."

There was understanding in the but, and she nodded, resting against the warmth of him for a moment. So much comfort in another's skin. So much hurt being bereft of it, being left with only your own.

She freed herself and reached for the phone, warching Warrick shake his head slightly as she dialled the number, but his gaze warm as he held her. She loved him. She hoped she never would have to know the pain of losing him, particulary through her own fault.

Once, long ago, Sara Sidle had been madly in love with Gil Grissom. Maybe she still was. Catherine hoped so. Oh, she hoped so very much. It would make it a little easier. 

"Sara? This is Catherine. Just listen, please..."


	7. Chapter Six

Chapter Six

When she turned and saw him stand in in the cold morning sunlight, the grey in his hair like silver, it was almost like a Thursday of so long ago. They had both seen death that day, both despaired - Grissom in his silence, she in her anger - and he had stood leaning against his car when she walked into the lab's car park. Just stood still and waited and she had walked to him, every step a change. He'd driven her away and he'd told her he'd wanted to kiss her and for a while, she'd felt more alive than at any other time she could remember.

And then her heart had died a little and she had left.

"Hello, Sara," he said softly, leaning slightly against her car. She could see now his face was more drawn and he seemed frailer, but it was still Grissom. Still the mind that had met hers and the hands that had rested against her skin at night, drawing out the smell of death.

"Grissom," she said, and even to her it sounded cool, winter coming. 

"Catherine said you..."

She held up a hand. "I can imagine what Catherine said. I just... I thought you were still in physiotherapy."

"I am. I took a week off to 'sort out the other major muscle you have broken', as Catherine put it."

"Your brain?" she joked, and he merely looked at her.

"My heart," he said quietly and she hardly had time to draw breath before he went on, as if he'd never said it. "Do you mind that I'm here, Sara? Catherine said you would be okay with it, but Catherine has her own ideas at times."

"I mind a little," she replied and she could see the hurt in him from the stillness of his face, trying not to give anything away. "But I'm also glad to see you."

"I'm glad to see you. You... You look good," he said hesitantly, still not giving much away. Sometimes reading Grissom was like reading old bones. The evidence was slight and often buried under layers of rock and earth. But for the bone experts, they could still tell a story. 

She had started to think herself a Grissom expert.

"You don't."

He laughed slightly, and that too was different. "Always honest Sara Sidle."

'Never honest Gil Grissom,' she thought, but that was a bitter thought from the Sara that had left and held more resentment than truth.

"Catherine said you had a lot of vacation days due," he went on after a moment, looking intently at her. "Still working too hard?"

"Just like in Vegas" she confirmed and he smiled a little, as he always did.

_"You work too hard."_

She turned to see him in the doorway, smiling at her and the scattered files around her feet. A slimmer of sunlight found the silver in his hair, and he looked for a moment almost ethereal. Gil Grissom the ghost.

"I was just making sure we didn't miss anything," she said, and he gave her a stern glance.

"Sara..."

"I'll be done in a minute."

"When I say that, I'm usually not done for hours," he replied. "I know every workaholic excuse. You can't fool me."

She finally put the paper down and walked over, leaning in to kiss him softly. Not a ghost's kiss, lips so very human. "I never could."

"Let's take some time off and go somewhere," he whispered against her lips, and as always, she nodded. She had told him the same just a few days ago, and he too had nodded.

They would take that time off very soon. Just after she'd solved this case.

They never did go somewhere, she thought, for all the times they had decided they would. Always a new case. Always one more dead to listen to.

"I was hoping you would take some time off and go with me somewhere," he said, almost as if he was remembering the same thing. 

"Where?"

"Anywhere."

"Another idea of Catherine's?" she asked, wondering if she should send Cath some silent thanks or silent curses.

"Her suggestion. My desire," he said simply, and the unspoken implication seemed to fill her with equal fear and longing. She could tell him no. She could have told Catherine no. She could live on her life in Boston and never revisit the past - but she'd never know then.

"Why?"

"I thought time off would be..."

"No. Why?"

"Because I love you," he said and she wasn't sure who was the most surprised at his words, him or her. "Would you like to start anew, Sara? Meet again?"

She looked at him in silence, remembering pain and hurt and betrayal and love and care and a comfortable silence on a Sunday morning, her head against his chest while watching Discovery. A simple little scene burned into memory for the simple little feeling of peace.

She hadn't had much of it elsewhere in her life.

"No," she finally said and she saw his face fall. "What has happened between us will always have happened. What happened to my father and mother will always have happened. I think I've been trying to change it through my work. But time only knows one way. Not even a little child's desperate wish can change that."

"I'm sorry," he said and she smiled briefly, a smile of loss and pain.

"I will not start anew with you, Gil Grissom. But we could try to heal what already is." 

He smiled then, like a sunrise, and she knew she'd never stopped loving him. She had just stopped idolizing him.

"I'd like that," he said, and she leaned against the car next to him, watching the sea move. "Where would you like to go?"

"Anywhere?"

"Anywhere," he confirmed, and it wasn't quite a star. It was more another lap of a relay, not quite the same Sara and Grissom running it. Maybe it would have another finishing line too.

Feeling his arm pressed against hers, she hoped so. Oh, she hoped so very much.


End file.
